Saturday, 15 December 2012

Suffolk Snowball

Saturday December 15

A free day at last. I was quietly fretting !

Via Walcott Post Office to post our Christmas cards - another at last concern, I had printer problems so couldn't print off the newsletter for distant friends. Many of the latter range from birding trips in Morocco/ Santander whale watching ferry/Panama/South Africa, to ex colleagues. I haven't done one for a while and try to keep it to one page.

A lovely sunny day, temperature rising to 10C, a welcome relief from a week of sub zero with torrential rain yesterday. We were in Aldeburgh soon after 11 a.m., negotiating the heavily pot-holed car parking area at the end of the main street. The location of the Hornemann's Redpoll was obvious from the knot of telescope - glued birders on the sea wall. I climbed the steep grassy bank and joined them. More big lenses were trained by photographers seated on the beach. All of us encircling an apparently oblivious and unconcerned bird feeding under and on a clump of weeds. What a cracker, absolutely beautiful. We watched it for a good half an hour before it flew off south along the beach. It makes Arctic Redpoll look dark!

I tried some digiscoping but had to move further away, we were viewing it below us from about 15 feet away.